When life at 23 weeks is worse than abortion

By SUZANNE MOORE, Mail on Sunday

Last updated at 14:16 20 March 2005

An attack on the rights of women to have an abortion has been on the way for some time.

It hasn't been made explicit. But all those cutesy pictures of foetuses 'walking' in the womb at 12 weeks and the saving of increasingly premature babies have made us question at what age the foetus is viable.

The current battleground in this country is over late abortions because the bigger war has been won. The majority of people and politicians accept safe and legal abortion and have done for 40 or so years.

Most people, like Tony Blair, don't find it very 'nice' but do not want to go back to the days when women died from back-street abortions.

Since Cosmopolitan magazine asked each party leader his views, abortion is back in the news. Blair doesn't want to change the law, Kennedy doesn't know (poor show Charlie - what else don't you know?). Howard wants to lower the time limit from 24 to 20 weeks.

Up until now, there has not been any great demand to make this an Election issue, but then Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor weighed in.

At least we can be clear about the cardinal. He is against all abortion. Like the Pope, he talks of the slaughter of the unborn but, as with the Pope, one wishes that, as well as protecting the unborn, he was a little more concerned about the rights of the born - especially those children abused by paedophile priests during his watch.

We know what kind of mothers the Catholic Church prefers as the Pope canonises dead ones who had babies doctors warned would kill them. On the Pope's doorstep, we also know many Catholics ignore him as Italy has the lowest birth rate in Europe.

Remember, though, the one thing that unites all religious fundamentalists - Catholics, Muslims, Evangelicals, Jews - is that they seek to control the bodies and sexuality of women.

If you are of such a persuasion I am not going to persuade you abortion is ever OK. However, I guess it's not me you're after but the distressed pregnant teenager.

Last week we got more displays of stunning mawkishness with women writing of their own abortions in purple prose and 'haunting stories' of babies who survived at 23 weeks.

What we didn't hear, though, were the equally haunting stories of the nine in ten babies who didn't survive at 23 weeks or those who were left with severe disabilities.

If such a child does survive, the parents are sent out of hospital in a daze a few months later with minimal support. The child, who may need 24-hour care for the rest of its life, is returned to a 'community' that provides little more than a few hours of respite care a week.

Eventually, it depends on whether you think someone's religious faith entitles them to force women to give birth to children they don't want.

The question is simple: Who has control over a woman's body? That individual, the State or the Church?

Am I uncomfortable with late abortion? Of course - you would have to be inhuman not to be.

I can only imagine the desperation of women who put themselves through this. But make no mistake, this debate is not about those rare cases but all abortion.

I no more want celibate priests telling me what I can or cannot do with my own reproductive system than I want Michael Howard's interference. You men can pontificate with your gods. Let us women decide what to do with our doctors.

And please spare us all the concern for the innocent and vulnerable.

The children of travellers, asylum seekers, prisoners, the poor, the addicted, those orphaned by Iraq's 'liberation', those who are actually born at 23 weeks and who may never walk or talk ...

Why don't you pour all that Christian love into them and leave us sinful women alone?